Using Training

Reminder: all Training answers and trained within-the-Matrix answers should be confirmed with VILE at (617) 452-3063 or x2-3063.

To complete your mission in the Matrix, you will need to hone your skills through training. By now you have access to all of our training programs. This document will help you use your training.

Each training program will produce some sort of answer (a phrase or an imperative) that tells you how to transform the answer to a puzzle within the Matrix to the answer you will need to solve the metapuzzle. Each puzzle is solvable on its own without training: training will not tell you how to solve a puzzle, only how to interpret its results. Moreover, each puzzle will still give you a solution and not a string of uninterpretable letters. It should be clear from context (i.e. flavortext, not the puzzle itself) what training you need.

Our simulations predict that you should need each training module no more than three times. You will certainly need each of them at least once.

Here are some examples, using deactivated training modules that VILE has used on past missions:

Suppose that you had been through the training module "Drunken Boxing" and learned the answer THERE IS NO SPOON. When traveling in the Matrix, you might encounter a puzzle hidden among whiskey crates, which would be your indication that you need to know something about drunken boxing to interpret the answer. If the answer to that puzzle were BOSPORAN, you would apply the training to get BRA. (You would not need to remove any spoons from the puzzle itself; nor would you get a nonsense answer such as SLAPOTIONN that trains to LATIN.)

Or suppose that you had been trained in "Dishwashing" (be prepared: you never know what skills you may need!) with the answer USE THE MIDDLE NAME. If confronted with a puzzle under a painting of goat-legged gods smoking marijuana, you might realize that this involves "pots and pans" and apply your training. If the answer to the puzzle you find is CHARLES VEST, the trained answer would be MARSTILLER, his middle name.

Some training might involve an "artifact" of sorts: some sort of object or other creation that you must apply to an answer. In such cases, the training will still come with directions that tell you how to use the artifact, which will be a verbal answer you can confirm with VILE. For instance, if a training module resulted in your acquiring a piece of red cellophane that needed to laid over some answers in the Matrix, your answer to the training would not be "this piece of red cellophane." You would use that cellophane within the training module to get an answer (such as READ THROUGH THE CELLOPHANE) that you can call in.